


Inexhaustibile

by LittleObsessions



Category: Addams Family - All Media Types
Genre: Children, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Marriage, Married Life, Miscarriage, Sadness, loss of a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-28
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:15:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 7,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28393740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleObsessions/pseuds/LittleObsessions
Summary: "He daren’t look at her, for fear that she might ask him to leave again. The pain had been awful, dreadful, but now it was excruciating to know she expected they do this alone, entirely separate of each other.They had never been at an impasse like that. "A chapter story.
Relationships: Gomez Addams/Morticia Addams
Comments: 13
Kudos: 29





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> A) This is not - for the most part - happy and B) Please heed the trigger warnings.
> 
> It is set in the time between the climax of the first film and the “several months later” which would make sense, since the main action of the film takes place just before Christmas. (It works, trust me...)  
> Thanks to Midnightlovestories for her honesty and her beta-ing, and Aftensjerne for her encouragement. They are my fandom friends and they totally indulge me. 

* * *

So it’s true, when all is said and done, grief is the price we pay for love.”  
**― E.A. Bucchianeri**

* * *

He only let himself give into it when he was finally alone, sequestered in the safety of his study.

Up until then, he had walked through it in a daze, washing the little rivulets of blood from his hands, stripping his shirt, and throwing it into the fire because he couldn’t bear the tangy smell of sweat, of sadness and of loss.

“It’s gone?” He had asked Burrows, in the dead silence of the hallway just outside their bedroom, as if he did not already know that it was gone.

Of course it was gone. He had witnessed it himself.

Their family doctor, a friend of his own from Harvard, and the man who had been at all of his children’s births – even this one – had nodded.

“What about Morticia?”

“Physically fine, though she has lost more blood than I would consider normal.” He had answered. “If the bleeding starts again you will need-“

Gomez had held out a hand to silence him, a sudden surge of horror washing over him. Glistening droplets of blood, and his wife in the centre of their bed, on her knees, her hand between her legs, her black nightgown slick and clinging to her thighs, her white fingers scarlet. And misery – so pure it was exquisite – contorting her face.

He had never felt so impotent, so helpless, in his life. And that feeling was only growing worse, in the after.

After their child was gone, with the paramedics and the doctor, after the bloody sheets and clothes had been changed and after his wife had fallen into a sedative-induced sleep. 

After, the house was full of nothing but silence.

He tried, in the present, to dull the memory, but he felt it as surging bile in his throat. He made his way towards the decanter on the sideboard, and, hands trembling, poured himself a glass until it was sloshing over the top, dribbling onto the French polish in a miserable little puddle.

He moved over to his desk, kicking the seat out with his foot, and slumped into the chair. His papers from the afternoon were laid out neatly on the leather, awaiting his signature. He shuffled them together, aligning all the edges and setting it aside to clear the surface. He needed to be busy, he needed to refuse to give into the memory of it. 

He cradled his whiskey to his chest, fingers reaching out to trace the filigree frame of the photograph nearest him. It was an image of his two children, sitting atop Isaac Newton’s tomb in Westminster, tossing an apple between them.

Their lovely, devilish children.

Tears sprung into his eyes as the evening’s events resurfaced again and, groaning, he leaned forward and rested his reeling head on his arms.

No matter how much he tried, he couldn’t get his wife’s dreadful, keening moan, as she called him from their bathroom, out of his mind. He had pushed the door open, alarmed but hardly afraid until he had seen here there, sheets pushed back, eyes wide with terror.

“Gomez, the baby…”

She had gasped suddenly, pale skin sickly glistening, and she had held out her hand as if to prove her fear was real. Even in the firelight, distorted as it was, he had known instantly that it was blood. And what that meant.

And he was paralyzed.

Then his wife, so congruent with pain, usually so beautiful with it, curled over on herself and screamed in a way he had never known before, as agony rippled through her body. This was not the pain she wanted, this was not the pain she deserved. And the sound spoke of that; of horror and of agony he would never, could never, know.

A thump on his desk drew him back from the recollection, and he raised his eyes to see Thing there. His pet stood plaintive, waiting on a master who felt masterless. 

“You already know…” he said and Thing jumped onto his shoulder, squeezing there.

He was silent for a moment, eyes drifting towards the window. Somewhere, in the in-between, the snow had begun to fall.

“What do I do?” He asked. “How do I...”

The words disappeared into a chasm of panic, panic he did not want to give room to, or acknowledge.

“How do I help my wife?”

There was no answer.

**-0-**

Morning came round suddenly, and all at once. But she had been awake long before sunrise, and she had simply lay there, willing the morning to melt into nothing, so she could stay exactly as she was, suspended in disbelief.

Soon the children would wake, and she would have to tend to them. And she would face her mother and her brother-in-law and hold it together, exactly as she expected of herself.

Her husband lay beside her, so close his skin burned, but he may as well have been at the other side of the world.

When she could bear it no longer, she sat up gingerly, expecting the room to spin or her body to fail her.

Of course, her body had already done that.

But nothing happened, and so she breathed in the cool air of the morning and made her way towards the bathroom.

Out of those who had been around her the evening before, the paramedics and Burrows and her husband, someone had had the good sense to clear the bathroom of the aftermath; of the puddles of water and sodden silk and all the tears she should have shed but still couldn’t.

She stood in front of the mirror and wasn’t sure she recognized the woman there. The woman with age and pain and sadness writ blazingly across her face. The woman with birdlike arms and a broken body.

A woman who had, mere weeks ago, told her husband he was going to be a father – again.

His joy had buoyed her, as it always did. It had carried her along on a wave of excitement, washing away all the uncertainty and what-ifs and panics about a third that she had voiced, and he had assuaged her with a mere smile and the beguiling reassurance he was so adept at.

And she felt such a fool for investing in it.

She ran the bath, a giant copper tub on a marble plinth, and took great care in ensuring it was as deep as it could be.

The water was hot, and it distracted her from the burning agony that was slowly twisting her inside.

If she ignored it long enough, she could conquer it entirely.

That was, after all, what she always did.

And she always got what she wanted.

Beneath the water, she risked coursing her fingers over her belly. There had been an imperceptible rise there yesterday, but it was gone too.

The speed of its journey into the past, into something she would hold only in her memory now, was breathtaking.

And it had taken everything of her, everything she was sure of, and scattered it to the wind.

She gasped as tears suddenly burned, hot and hard behind her eyes, and desperate to fall.

She wept silently, and in tiny gusts of stifled moans and humiliated breaths.

“Morticia?”

By the time he entered the room, the water was ice-cold, and she couldn’t bring herself to turn. She felt a weight so magnificent, she wondered if she would ever move again.

He came to stand at the foot of the bath. He was ashen, and exhausted, and she realised she could not recall when he had come to bed.

“Good morning,” she looked at him, smiled, and then pointed towards the towels. “Would you?”

She could see him faltering, drowning, but she did not have the energy to rescue him. She barely had the strength to keep herself afloat.

“Morticia we should speak a-“

“A towel, Gomez," she said sharply, more sharply than she intended, and then swallowed audibly before adding quietly, "Please."

She tried to remain aloof, pretending every bit of her did not hate this body and this moment and this charade.

Cast adrift, he did as he was asked, shocked – she supposed – into silence. He held his hand out for her, and for a second their eyes locked and she saw her own pain reflected back at her; brilliant, brutal.

His fingers gripped hers as if she was drowning, as if she was about to sink.

She already had, but he didn’t know that. 

She swallowed, and looked away, and did something she had never, until that moment.

“Would you give me some time alone?”

The hurt on his face was unimaginable, and he hesitated, and seemed suspended there, before he finally nodded and retreated.

When he closed the door behind him, she looked at herself once more in the mirror, and she did not know herself.


	2. Two

She was beautiful when she joined him at the foot of the stairs; hair perfectly in place, make-up hiding multitudinous sins, dress tight and slick against her body.

Her ability to construct a façade, even at the most difficult moments, had always impressed him. It was, however, the first time it had frightened him. He had barely been able to dress, couldn’t stomach his breakfast, had barely been able to look at his brother or mother-in-law as they cast him pitying glances across the breakfast table. He had lost a child, and he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to re-emerge from the absolute and pure sadness consuming him.

And he was worried that his wife had seemed to disavow the need to grieve.

Tears sprung in to his eyes at the mere thought, but the emergence of their son from the den had him forcefully swiping at his eyes. 

“Have a lovely day, darling,” she bent to kiss Pugsley’s cheek as he reached up to take his lunch from her. “Try to be kind to your history teacher, he’s fragile.”

“I will, mother,” he promised, not meaning it at all, as he stepped back and shrugged on his winter coat.

Wednesday joined them then, book bag studiously over one arm, coat already on.

“Was Dr Burrows here last night?”

“I felt unwell,” his wife said, without missing a beat. “He came to check me over. I am perfectly fine now.”

He hadn’t been sure what they would say to their children – who hadn’t known about the baby - but he hadn’t expected his wife to lie so blithely, and it caught him on the backfoot for a moment. 

Wednesday eyed her mother suspiciously, unsatisfied with the response but clearly unable to ascertain why. Finally giving up, she nodded, and took her brother by the elbow.

“We will see you tonight.”

When they opened the door a flurry of snow blew in, freezing the hallway even more, and bringing with it a silence so oppressive he thought he might suffocate.

They stood side by side for a moment before he spoke.

“Are you still bleeding?”

He daren’t look at her, for fear that she might ask him to leave again. The pain had been awful, dreadful, but now it was excruciating to know she expected they do this alone, entirely eseparate of each other.

They had never been at an impasse like that.

“Nothing I hadn’t expected.”

Her voice quavered as she spoke, betraying the unexpectedness of it all, before she turned to him.

“Please stop fussing…I am perfectly alright.”

It was the one and only time in his life he had known Morticia to lie to him, but it was such a pitiful lie that to have it challenged would have been cruel to her.

So instead, he decided to be honest with her.

“Don’t shut me out Tish, please,” he reached out to cup her face, her cool cheek against his palm. And it was a relief to touch her, and to know she was still real and still his. “I’ve lost something too. We’d be best doing this together.”

For a second she capitulated to him, eyes fluttering closed against this touch, and he saw all the thing she wanted to say but could not.

It did not content him, instead it made him feel even more unsettled. And then she was closed again, straightening up and turning her face to kiss his palm perfunctorily.

“I would never.”

-0-

It had been a week, and she had still not slept.

The bleeding had stopped but she still felt as if life was leeching out of her, invisibly, slowly, without mercy. And every day was the same; she awoke on her own, she took a bath, and they slept beside each other and ate together but did not speak, and she did not know how it had come to this.

They lived parallel lives, and pretended it was not quarrying a chasm between them.

She only knew that this silence was preferable to acknowledging the pain that was curdling her slowly, turning her into someone she did not recognize and dis not like.

She turned to look at him, his body glowing in the golden light of the roaring fire. His skin was honey-colored, the shadow of his contours heightened by the contrast. She ghosted her fingers out to touch him, unafraid he would wake, and even more relieved he would not.

She couldn’t face him.

She had little right to him, and very little desire for him to know how desperately she longed for him to take this pain away. Pain she had wrought upon them quite spectacularly.

She could feel his exhaustion, and she knew she was responsible for it. The fact of it was that she didn’t know how to claw her way back, how to give voice to the agony she was suffering.

To talk about the little puddles of blood and about the horror on his face as he watched her birth their baby too soon, and how it was so out of her control that she could not have imaged anything more terrible, even in her worst nightmares.

How could she tell him that, for the first time in her life, pain had found her wanting? And she wasn’t impervious to it, in spite of what she had once believed of herself?

He moaned in his sleep and turned to lie flat on his back.

His face was so sharply handsome, and she ached to look into his half-lidded eyes without an ounce of panic or shame or sadness, or the creeping feeling that she had somehow failed him.

And for a second she was tempted to wake him and ask just that of him. To crawl into his arms and find peace there. Every time she thought it was as simple as that, she was reminded of the terror on his face, of the way he recoiled from the sight of her there, burning pain tearing at her pelvis and hips and thighs, and of how she must have fallen so dramatically for him.

Of the way her husband, full to bursting with the wildest of emotions, a man whose passion as so massive it was enough for both of them, had simply stood, rooted to the spot, incapacitated by her torment, until something propelled him forward.

Had he stood there, a mere witness, perhaps she could have put it out of her mind. Perhaps she could have forgiven herself.

But he had climbed on to the bed, his entire body trembling, and cradled her as she went somewhere else entirely, somewhere he could not be and somewhere she did not want him, and let their child go.

And then he was complicit in her crime, tied up and knotted in it, and she could not forgive herself for that.


	3. Three

“Are you completely sure about this tonight?” He asked, coming to the door of her dressing room but stopping short of entering.

He wasn’t welcome here. And that was evident. But he could not bare the thought of parading her around like a prize while, in private, they were scarcely able to look at each other never mind converse. Christmas had come and gone and they had played the charade of the loving parents and couple, treading a path so well-worn that it had been perfectly easy to forget that she was still living a life entirely separate to him. They were no longer treading that path, as it were.

And he felt himself coming apart at the seams, more from loneliness than from loss. He felt abandoned, and betrayed, and it was compounded by how sad and sore he was for her.

He was rudderless in the face of her silence, and he didn’t know how to steer them out of this storm.

“Help me,” she simply said to his reflection in the mirror, motioning to the laces of her corset, which were wound around her fists tightly, whitening her fingers.

She had lost weight in recent weeks, and it was obvious in the way the garment gaped below her shoulder blades, even though it was tightened to its limit. He had not said anything, but he had noticed it. As he noticed everything.

She just didn’t give him credit for that.

“That’s as far as it’s going to go cara,” he took the laces from her anyway, and avoided looking at her reflection in the mirror.

Because he knew he would be met by anger, an anger he did not understand.

Apart from their shared bed, this was the closest he had been to her in the intervening weeks between that horrible night and now, and it felt subjugating in a humiliating way, to be reduced to her dresser.

Making love to her wasn’t even on his periphery; holding her would have been enough to reassure him that they were still connected in some small way. But he didn’t dare try and force that boundary.

“Please try,” she muttered, head falling forward so she was no longer looking at him. “It’s the smallest one I have, and I haven’t had time to commission a new one.”

“You don’t need it, you are beautiful as it is.” He looked at her, tried to communicate all the things she would not allow him to say. “We don’t have to go to this gala to prove-“

“Stop!” She looked up suddenly, eyes blazing, her red lips a snarl of anger in the mirror. “Stop. Please. We must go, it’s important for your business…and we attend every year. I am not trying to prove anything!”

His own anger, so repressed until that moment, suddenly filled him to the very edges of his being. He had been expending all his power on trying to reserve it, to keep it from her, that it had grown so much bigger than him. And he was surprised that it wasn’t a roaring beast, wasn’t a manic explosion, but a vicious and deadly knife.

He looked at her for a moment, truly looked at her, and saw so many fragmented pieces of her. But he could not contain himself any longer and he could not pretend he was not writhing in agony too.

“All you are trying to prove is that you are able to walk away entirely unscathed from something which has broken us,” he said quietly, shocked by his own control and eloquence. “That is all you are interested in proving.”

She looked shattered for a moment, though true to form she recovered almost instantly. He let the laces fall from his fingers, weakened suddenly by the truth presenting itself so unceremoniously.

“And in all of that, you’ve forgotten about how I feel for you, and how much we have given of ourselves to this marriage. You think I just bluster through life, and don’t notice you are in pain. I know you Morticia, I know you almost as well as you know me. And I know that you hate that.”

She turned to him, and though her anger was gone, bitterness was in its place. She was weakened by his assault though, and furious at her own weakness.

It killed him to see it.

“You don’t know the first thing about how I feel,” she said quietly, aloof and arrogant.

“Then tell me!”

He held his palms up in a gesture of surrender, and even though it was horrible, he felt a small measure of delight at the fact he was getting something – anything – from her.

She looked at him, her scrutiny unbearable, before she turned away.

“No.”

He stood for a second, contemplating the slope of her shoulders, the gaping space between her back and her corset, the scattered lipsticks and carefully crafted façade his wife had suddenly begun living.

“I held you in higher esteem than that,” he whispered.

“Well you’re a fool then.”

He clenched his fists, furious at himself for his caustic words, furious at her for her staunch refusal to just open to him. He had never been as frustrated with her as he was now.

But worse than that, he pitied her. He hated himself for that and, if she knew how he felt she would loathe him too.

And he hated what grief did to her; cracking her wide open, exposing all the things she held secret to her. He hated how it had hardened and shattered her all at once, and left pieces of her strewn across their home, while this other person occupied her skin.

“I lost my child too, Morticia. _Our_ child.” His voice rose, trembling on the unfairness of it all, on the unfairness of her deliberate exclusion. “I don’t expect it feels the same, I don’t want it too. Morticia give me something. Give me anything.”

But she did not turn, granting him nothing but silence.

He did not know how to bring her back.

They stood like that for what felt like forever, an eternity of misery stretching out before them.

And he could not bare it any longer.

“I am cancelling tonight.”

“Be my guest Gomez,” she said quietly, pulling out her dresser chair and sitting in front of the mirror. “Please close the door on your way out.”

He stood on the other side, and swallowed a roar of frustration as he sunk his teeth in to his own knuckles.   
  


-0-

They kept brandy in their room, and a bottle of cognac that had been ludicrously expensive and he had won at an auction because she dared him to bid on it. Sometimes he would leave their bed, sheets tangled round his waist, and pour himself a bowl and sit by the fire and she would climb, naked, into his lap, and he would worship her body, trailing liquor across her skin on his tongue and whispering worship into her flesh.

She missed the feel of him, the hot urgency of his body, the taste of his mouth and his tongue, the way he would make her sob with arousal and cry with pleasure. The things he would let her do to him, with a mere suggestion, because he wanted her so desperately.

Right now all she had known was pain, and it had been easy to forget those things. It had been convenient to ignore why she loved him in the first place, and why her love grew still, colored violet and bitter with inexhaustibility.

The brandy was easing her maudlin thoughts, softening the edges of the agony until it was a dull ache, but she burned with shame when she thought about how she had treated him, and all the horrible things they had given birth to in the absence of their child.

So she poured herself another bowl, and another, until there was little left in the bottle and she felt woozy, her gut sloshing with booze she wasn’t entirely accustomed to.

And an overwhelming, unabating urge to be touched by him would not stop biting at her suddenly. She knew she wouldn’t be able to let it rest until she had sated the desires suddenly roaring in her.

She stood up, knowing exactly where she would find him, and picked her way carefully down the stairs to the study.

He was seated at his desk, head bent over a book, a not dissimilar bowl of brandy sitting beside his ashtray, on which was perched a cigar.

He looked up at her as she stood, and his face was gentle and full of remorse, and it wasn’t what she wanted. She didn’t want his kindness or his love.

“Don’t look at me with pity,” she said, cold, demanding.

He looked startled for a moment.

“We should talk.”

“I don’t want to talk,” she came towards him, untying the belt of her robe and letting it fall open to reveal her entirely naked body.

She had, up until the loss of their child, been wildly confident with her body. and she had forgotten what thar felt like.

He swallowed, and a flash of desire so potent that it was frightening moved across his face.

“You want me,” she said, trying hard to keep the relief from her voice, as she moved in front of his chair.

She leaned in to capture his mouth, bringing her knees up to rest on either side of his thighs and setting her weight on him. He growled into her mouth as her tongue pushed past his teeth. She ground callously down on his suddenly hard groin and he pulled back to look at her, as if snapping out of a daydream.

“You’ve been drinking,” he said, shaking his head. “And it wouldn’t be a good idea. Not like this.”

She felt as if she had been burned, physically, and any elation from the alcohol was dampened immediately. She recoiled back, stumbling, trying to put as much space between them as she could, before she tried to run.

Panic struck him, she could see, and he stood and tried to reach for her.

“Morticia, I want you…more than anything but not-“

“Not with a woman who has fallen off that pedestal you put her on,” she said softly, voice sore, tugging the edges of her robe together.

“What? No!” He said quickly coming towards her, hands gripping her arms.

“Please don’t touch me,” she pleaded and he withdrew instantly.

“I simply meant I didn’t want my first time making love to you to be like this-“

“Sometimes you fuck me…you don’t usually complain.”

She was pleased to see anger flare up in him again, because it was better than pity and far better than the sanctimony and level-headedness he had recently seemed to master, while she was spiraling out of control.

“Don’t reduce us to that,” he said, stepping back. “And don’t come here looking to find an anesthetic. I won’t be that for you darling.”

“Well you serve no purpose then,” she murmured, turning on her heels.

He was silent for a moment, and she expected to escape having hurt him more than he could have her.

“I’ve seen you be cruel Morticia, but I never thought you would turn that on me.”

She wanted to die on the spot, and his words hurt so much that they stopped her in her tracks for just a moment, before she managed to gain enough momentum to escape the truth.


	4. Four

“We need to talk.”

She stopped at the stone bench, not presuming she should sit down beside him. It was the depth of winter now, and there was a permanent layer of snow blanketing the city. He was wrapped in a beautiful wool coat, lined in ermine, and he lifted his fedora covered head to look at her.

“I would say so,” he agreed simply.

“May I?” She motioned to the bench.

“Have I ever wanted you anywhere but beside me, Morticia?”

She took her seat on the bench, “No.”

They were silent for a moment, watching the busker across the way set up his violin, watching the joggers – braving winter in nothing but shorts and thin shirts and determination – running past. 

She had awoken that morning, an aching head and body to show for her little display the night before, and shame had begun chewing at her gut apace. She could barely think about how she had treated him; as a commodity, a thing to be fucked and discarded again, without the sloshing feeling of embarrassment churning deep within her.

And something else too; a deep clarity of what her behavior had done – was doing – to them. And how unfair that was to him. How troublingly selfish she had been.

She wanted to tell him all of that, to tell him that she knew, had sought, to actively hurt him in the hope of lessening her own pain. But it felt too big a truth to divulge.

From a woman who had only ever told the truth.

“When I woke up alone, I thought I had really driven you away. When Lurch said you’d come to the city, I nearly wept with relief.”

He smiled, but his eyes spoke of wariness. It was humiliating to see that.

“I needed some space,” he said honestly, and she could sense that he was too tired to cushion things for her. “The last few weeks have been a lesson in emotional whiplash. And I’ve been grieving too…”

She turned to look at him, and was filled with venom from the very bottom of her boots to the top of her head. But it wasn’t anger, it was resentment. Resentment of his honesty and his ability to just…feel.

“You don’t think I love the children as much as you do, you don’t think it hurts as much as you hurt? Because I don’t go around screaming my love from the rooftops, you think I haven’t been dying inside?” she asked, horrified as she asked it, knowing it was rhetorical in its nature and a stream of her own worries.

He turned his full body towards her, and she was taken aback by the hard fury on his face.

“The complete opposite, Morticia. Had I known what this would do to you, had I been able to predict the sadness you would have felt, I would have done everything to take it away from you. You really think I believe that of you? That you love our children less? If anything, you love them more than I can ever understand. You carried them in your body, and you nourished them-“

“Not all of them,” she interrupted, in a voice that was so meek and so quiet she hated it. “I feel so weak, and so…broken. In a body which failed me. And you had to witness that.”

She knew tears were tracking down her face and, raw and exposed, she wanted to hide. She wanted, she suddenly realised, to have never suffered this.

He proffered his handkerchief and when she had taken it, he gave her no choice but to accept him wrapping his gloved fingers with hers.

“Gomez…I am so sorry for how I behaved. The things I said, especially last night, they were grossly unfair. And I…” she stalled, tried to calm herself. “I just wanted to feel something other than pain, and anger towards you.”

She watched his face for a response, for anything that showed she hadn’t hurt him beyond repair. She seen now what she had been willfully blind to; his own fears, his own sadness, his own loss. And she felt another sadness that she hadn’t experienced before – the sadness of having failed him, while being consumed by failure herself.

“Do you blame me?”

His question was delicate and fragile, and it pained her to see what he had come to believe of her. “Because I was excited? Or because it was my child? You shut me out, and it’s all I can think of; you must blame me.”

“No,” she squeezed his hand. “No, I am ashamed. Ashamed you had to witness that, ashamed you had to-“

“Morticia,” he said, emphatic and hard with truth, “you have nothing to be ashamed of. It was a fault of nature, an act of cruelty on nature’s part. It is neither you nor my doing.”

She knew his words to be true, but wanted so desperately to refute them.

“Who can I blame, if not myself?” She asked, as if he would be able to answer that.

He was quiet for a moment, and then he cupped her cheek. This time she did not flinch, did not recoil away.

“No one. No one is to blame.”

She nodded, knowing it to be the truth but too raw to accept it until now, too full of resentment and revulsion for the blandness, the sheer artlessness, of it all; it was no one’s fault, but the capriciousness of nature.

And being out of control made her feel frightened, beyond something she could explain.

He took her hands within his, propelling her to turn and face him.

“Did you hold yourself responsible?”

She looked into his eyes and was soothed to see love in them, something she’d been ignoring for the weeks in between then and now.

It was forcing her, now that the anger had died, now that the immediate and shocking pain had receded into a slow aching reality, to be honest.

She swallowed, and nodded, unable to articulate what it was that had driven her, unable to tell him that she felt betrayed by her own body, by her failure, and by the excitement she had let grow and flourish quietly within her, for this baby they hadn’t planned and she hadn’t wanted.

“Because initially, you didn’t want another child?” His voice, though full of pity, wasn’t condescending.

She couldn’t answer, but he knew already anyway. And the relief she felt was immense, having shared a burden she could not articulate.

“Oh my love,” he crushed her to him, almost smothering her.

She wept quietly into the beautiful wool of his coat as he wrapped her in his arms.

She was grateful for it; grateful of the forgiveness, of the deep understanding he had of her that she both hated and adored.

And for the peace she finally felt.

He held her until her tears ran dry, and she merely stayed in his arms, thankful for the warmth, for the endless dedication he had to her, even at her worst moments.

“How did you find me?”

“Williamson said you’d gone for a walk,” she answered, lifting her head, “in the park.”

“Can’t get the friends or the staff,” he smiled. “I come here to think, when I need it.”

She sat back, setting her hands in her lap.

“I have to apologise to you for my lack of…consideration. Gomez, I often think you are quite a simple man when it comes to emotions and I don’t…”

She didn’t know how to explain that his response had caught her off guard, and that she wasn’t sure how to handle him.

“Because I am either the center of happiness or the very epitome of despair,” he agreed, and then shrugged. “I’ve never seen you like that. I guess I had to be the level one. I didn’t know what else to do. You are always the one in control, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t know how to take back control,” she admitted, looking out into the whiteness of the park.

“You don’t have to,” he said simply, as if it was the easiest thing in the world.

And she supposed it was, if she let him take the lead.


	5. Epilogue

Epilogue

“I can’t believe you’re forgoing your usual New Year’s Eve party. Where am I supposed to get free and copious amounts of booze, as well as a sure-fire one night stand, tonight? I was thinking of phoning Ophelia and cutting out the middle man, but it seems tasteless.”  
He rolled his eyes at Williamson, and then snapped his briefcase shut.  
“You’re on your own old man, I am afraid,” he patted his friend’s back in mock-consolation.  
Williamson sighed dramatically , and began walking with him to the door of his office.  
“All joking aside,” his friend said soberly, “I am glad you’re taking some time. I hope Morticia is-“  
“Morticia is doing well,” he interrupted, delighted with the truth of it. “But she and I haven’t had…we haven’t had a lot of space. First with the baby and then with Christmas. And she isn’t much up to hosting. I certainly don’t expect her to.”  
“Of course not,” his friend agreed. “But you both owe me a magnum of champagne when she is up to it.”  
“You have a deal.”

-0-

The children were abed, her mother was spending New Year’s Eve with her bridge club, and Fester was out making up for 25 lost Hogmanays.  
The house was, ostensibly, entirely theirs.  
And it was a relief to be alone with him, properly alone and absolutely sure of that they were on the same ground, tentatively toying at the notion that they were on the right track for the first time in a few months.  
She stretched out on the chaise lounge as he handed her a flute of champagne and sat beside her, clinking their glasses together. The den was warm and quiet, a fire roaring in the hearth, and for the first time in a long time, she felt a peace she had almost forgotten.  
“To a renewed sense of honesty,” he said, smiling gently.  
“I could certainly drink to that…but I want to be careful,” she said, attempting jocularity before broaching the subject.  
He was quiet for a moment, staring into the flames.  
“It wasn’t that I didn’t want you, that I don’t want you now,” he said, knowing what she was asking without her needing to voice it. “Had I fucked you in my study that night, I would have been confirming what you wanted to believe. And I never want you to believe that. And when you awoke the next morning, what would you have felt? I value you above anything. Anything.”  
“You haven’t touched me since,” she said, fear lacing her voice in a way she didn’t want it to.  
But she was quietly pleased with herself that she had been brave enough to broach the subject with him, because – in the little time they had together, they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms or talked – it had started to vex her that he didn’t seem to want to seduce her, and she wasn’t entirely sure he was ready to be seduced.  
She didn’t want a repeat of that dreadful night, because – in spite of the fact she was healing – she wasn’t entirely sure she could recover from another blow like that.  
“I can’t imagine how hurt you must have been,” he continued. “But I don’t ever want us to punish each other like that. We might pretend, we might even talk a good game about it, but at the heart of it it’s always been act of love for me. And that wasn’t about love, it was about punishment. You were punishing yourself.”  
“Do you forgive me?” She asked, needing to hear it.  
“There’s nothing to forgive. Do you believe that I still want you…so much I feel physically starved?” He squeezed her thigh, and added dryly: “I’ve practically been a monk these last few months.”  
For the first time, her husband of the before emerged a little and she was delighted to see him.  
She took a sip of her drink, and then raised a brow and he laughed.  
“You do talk a very good game,” she reached her fingers out to toy with the belt of his robe, and then tugged at it. “I have rather missed it.”  
He stalled her hand. And his eyes were dark and burning, and a thrill of desire coursed through her.  
“No elaborate toys tonight, alright?”  
She pouted in faux disappointment, though she agreed entirely. Setting her champagne aside, she raised herself on to her knees and they were so close there was barely any space between their bodies.  
Even less between their minds.  
And she delighted in it.  
“Make love to me, please, mon amour.”  
he grinned wildly, crushing her body to his, pulling her on to her feet and in front of the fire, their mouths never parting.  
His fingers made light work of her robe, unknotting the ribbon and pushing it away from her body, where it landed on the bearskin rug in a puddle of expensive silk.  
She had forgotten how delicious his mouth was, how absolutely beguiling it was to get lost in him.  
He pulled back to look at her face, saying more than he every could have with words as he looked in to her eyes, and then leaned in.  
“Relax, I’ve got this.”  
And she wasn’t strong enough to pretend she didn’t need or want that.  
She stood motionless, eyes fluttering closed, as his mouth alighted first on her neck, then trailed hot devotion across her collarbones and her decolletage. She wove her fingers into his slick hair as he kissed his way down her silk covered sternum, over her belly, and mewled in anticipation when he began to raise the hem of her nightgown at her ankles and push it to her waist, holding it there as his lips focused on the trembling flesh of her thighs. Her hands move to his shoulders to try and gain some balance as he began caressing her with his mouth.  
“Gomez,” she rasped, her voice dry and desperate. “I need to lie down.”  
His hand came round to grip her rear, supporting her down on to the rug to lie back. He slid her legs apart, his tongue finding her wet and desperate flesh instantly, swirling his tongue repeatedly until she was arching off the rug, and gasping his name into the sparking silence.  
“Gomez, Gomez…I am going to come,” she groaned, fingers tightening in his hair again as he swept his tongue upwards, and set alight to her world.  
Her orgasm flowed over her, tingling to the very tips of her fingers and toes, lingering in her muscles and trembling flesh.  
“I have been desperate to hear that,” he grinned from between her thighs, all boyish charm and glittering eyes.  
The relief rippling through her body was threatening to make her weep, but she didn’t want to weigh the moment down with that. So instead she crooker her finger.  
“Come here,” she murmured, sitting up on her elbows.  
He gripped the hem of her nightgown, “Can I bring this with me?”  
“If you must,” she laughed, watching him as he trailed it the length of her body and helped her lift it over her head. He sat back on his heels, as she stretched out in front of the fire.  
“You look very good with nothing on,” he complimented, almost leering, as he began stripping off his robe and pyjamas.  
And she would have been lying to say it wasn’t hugely gratifying that he was still so in her thrall.  
“I had almost forgotten,” she sat up, wrapping her legs around his hips, and grinding down on to him.  
“I hadn’t,” he moaned as she readjusted, taking him in her fingers, and sank down on to him.  
He flung his head back, the vein in his neck glistening deliciously in the golden light, and howled his delight like a wild animal.  
And she was enraptured to see it, suspended in blissful pleasure to have him once more, and – regardless of any horror that might befall them – for eternity


End file.
